New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1887-08-28
RIOT Upon CIVILIZATION.


BLOT UPON CIVILIZATION.
The conscience of Georgia seems at last to
be awaking The convict lease system Is
said to be doomed. 1t is none too soon, for
in some of its features it is As great disgrace
to our American civilization as slavery itself,
and it has often been characterized by even
greater cruelt;cs and more revolving outragcs
upon natural rights. The wonder is that 10
should have endured so long The truth has
been told about it time and again by some OF
the bcst-known men in the South, but it was
abe to hold its ground because men OF high
standing and great influence, Governors and
United States Senators, were making fortunes
ont of it. every dollar of which, it is hardly
too much to say, was stained with human
blood. ANY one who is curious to see what an
atrocious and wicked system Of convict-slavcry
is still rractiscd in several States of the Union,
more than twenty years after tho Emanc1pa-
ton Proclamation, has only to read Mr.. George
w. Cables account of it, published some
wears since. Bat even Mr.. Cable was not able
to tell the whole truth about 1t, because no
could not write what women and children
might not read.
And yet when cx-Congressman FELTON, in
troduced bill in the Georgia Legislature two
years ago to reform the worst abuses OF the
system, it received only forty-nine votes.
This year he has renewed his efforts, an in
yestigation is in progress by the Legislature,
and just in time, let us hope, to give the sys-
tenn its death-blow disclosures have been
made of dreadful crueltes and abuses The
first of these. which has not found its way
North, was with relation to the convict camps
on the Augusta and Chattanooga Railroad. The
sanitary condition of the CAMPS was shocking.
The States chief medical officer reported that
he found " incipient evidence Of scurvy or
something very much like it, With an
average Of seventy eight convicts in camp
h. found that 645 days Of work were lost by
convicts through sickness in the previous seven
months, making five or six times as much
sickness during the same period as in the camp
On the Georgia Midland. Governor Gordon,
it should be said to his credit, at once issued
an order for a change of management, and
forbidding any further leases to these con-
tractors. The Georgia Midland camp, it will
bc observed, was referred TO in the reports as
by comparison a model camp It's lcssecs in
cluded some of the most prominent men in
the State among them one cX-Govcrn r And
now It has been discovered, by means Of an
ANONYMOUS letter to the Governor that con
victs in this camp have been brutality whipped
for revealing abuses Their wounds made
CHASTITY sight, which must have recalled the
worst days Of slavery. The lease is to be
annulled, and so also probably the ono owned
by Senator Joseph Brown, though it is said
there is no COMPLAINT Of that But we fail to
understand why even United States Sen
ator should be allowed TO swell his millions
by such hideous traffic.
These disclosures will doubtless help the
passage of Dr. Fcltons BILL which, strange
to say, has met with considerable opposition,
The bill provides for placing the juvenile Grim
inals in houses of correction, and for scparat-
ing the female from the male convicts. and so
ending some of the worst horrors
and cuelties Of the present system.
1t would be better TO go further
and abolish the lease system altogether. The
state has no more moral right TO hand over
conyicts to the unresraincd and often brutal
control Of contractors than it has t. sanction
murder, which indeed it does, for the latter
often find il cheaper ~ Kill convict by over
work than they do TO keep him alive. This
shameful system prevails, with varying de-
grees of abuse in seven Of the Southern States.
and the State Of Georgia, as the report Of the
Commissioner Of Labor at Washington. Carroll
d. Wright, on convict labor, shows, makes
profit of SO, 900 year by handing its CON
victs over, body and soul, men. women and
children, to the contractors. And the num-
Der of children, by the way, that 90 into these
convict camps, where the soul dies if the body
does not, is dreadful to contemplate. Mr..
Cable narratcs how the Governor OF Texas
pardoned in two years 200 convits One.f fourth
of whom were children between ten and six
teen years of age Can such things be in
Christian land?